MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: August 19, 2007

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August 25, 2007

Gonzales Finally On the Way Out?

U.S. News' Paul Bedard: "The buzz among top Bushies is that beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally plans to depart and will be replaced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Why Chertoff? Officials say he's got fans on Capitol Hill, is untouched by the Justice prosecutor scandal, and has more experience than Gonzales did, having served as a federal judge and assistant attorney general."

August 24, 2007

Russia Drowns NGOs in Red Tape

Strict enforcement of a new registration law is not only belaboring the work of NGOs in Russia but threatening their very existence. As the English-language daily the Moscow Times reports, many NGOs are struggling to comply with the new law's onerous demands.

Groups whose agenda present a challenge to the power-grasping Putin administration seem to have been singled out. The St. Petersburg-based Citizens' Watch, which seeks to protect constitutional rights from police and military encroachments, is now obligated to submit "the entirety of its written correspondence with anyone or any organization outside the office over a three-year period—including e-mails." Another group, the Heinrich Boell Foundation, which promotes democracy and human rights, plans to take on an extra employee just to deal with the increased paperwork.

Some in the NGO world and elsewhere wonder whether the new measures are, at least partially, in response to the recent revolutions in former Soviet bloc countries. Georgia's Rose Revolution in 2003 and the Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004 both toppled pro-Putin leaders through grassroots protests.

It's a pity Putin doesn't seem to realize that a strong state is helped, not hindered, by a strong civil society. Then again, perhaps it's too optimistic to expect a former KBG man, who has stacked his administration with former comrades, to allow the forces of transparency to operate unfettered.

— Ellen Charles

Tony Snow Wants You (If You Are a Reserve Officer Who Supports the Surge)

A reader sends this email he received today from a retired Marine general addressed to members of the Reserve Officers Association of the United States. Reserve officers of the supposedly non partisan association are invited to share any "positive (and negative)" developments in Iraq they believe the press may have failed to report.

Dear [xxxx], President Groskreutz and I recently had the opportunity to participate in a White House teleconference conducted by Press Secretary Tony Snow. Mr. Snow reinforced the President’s message about the preliminary report of Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus on the progress being made in Iraq since the “surge” of additional forces earlier this year. Mr. Snow repeatedly stated that he believed the country does not fully understand the critical nature of the threat in Iraq, and that the press has failed to report many of the positive things that have been happening. The press secretary asked that we use our best efforts to enable the men and women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan to come forward with their own accounts of what they saw and experienced in combat, their own assessments of the nature of the threats facing our Nation, and their view on the need for our presence in these theaters of war. Many ROA members have a truly unique insight into the “ground truth” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sharing those insights with the American people and with our governmental leaders will help everyone to better understand the complex situation in which we find ourselves.

Do we have vital national interests in Iraq? Afghanistan?

Is the “surge” of forces working?

Are there positive (or negative) things happening that the press fails to report?

It’s important that the views of the men and women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are heard. To facilitate this, we’ve created the “ROA Deployment Blog" as a vehicle for our members to share their experiences and views. ROA will do several things with the submissions we receive. We will publish a report outlining the range of responses, highlighting key trends, and quoting from the your submissions. (If you withhold permission to quote you by name, we will honor that direction and your submission will remain anonymous.) ROA will also send this report to the White House, DOD and the Congress. The ROA Deployment Blog ....can be accessed from the links in this message or from the front page of the ROA web site. As an alternative, responses may be sent to me by mail or e-mail. ...

LtGen [XXX] USMC (Ret)

Reserve Officers Association of the United States

Washington DC 20002

The recipient of the email sent an accompanying note, "Oh, this is great. ROA is becoming a shill for the White House.....!" And later informed me that he is resigning his membership in the group.

Electric Shocks Prompt "Impulsive" and "Primitive" Side of Brain

A recent study coming out of Britain finds that when the threat of electric shock looms near, humans shift from the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that governs rational thought) in order to engage the "fight or flight" part of the brain. In the study (published in its entirety yesterday in Science), volunteers played a game similar to Pac-Man, in which they had to evade a predator. When the computer predator caught them, they would receive a shock to the hand. Researchers found that as the predator closed in, the threat of iminent punishment moved the player's thinking from rational to impulsive and primitive.

Continue reading this post on our environment and health blog, The Blue Marble.

Surge Is Pushing Iraq Toward Partition

If today's news on Iraq isn't bleak enough for you, take heart: There's more. Since the surge began, the rate of Iraqis fleeing their homes has increased 20-fold. Part of the increase can be attributed to increased monitoring by the Iraqi government (such as it is), but continued sectarian violence is the real driver of displacement: Sixty-five percent of displaced Iraqis interviewed by the U.N. said that they had fled in response to direct threats to their lives. With so many Iraqis fleeing from mixed Sunni/Shiite areas, Iraq is looking more and more like a partitioned state.

Read more here about how the U.S. has hung its Iraqi supporters out to dry.

MSNBC Reports Really, Really Fake News

MSNBC.com reported yesterday that Michael Vick's dogfighting case is dividing African American leaders into two camps—one that criticizes the quarterback's cruelty to animals, and another whose members think his persecution is driven by a racist agenda. Supposedly leading the latter is the Reverend Al Sharpton, who the news group quotes at length.

The problem, as Gawker and National Review Online have noted, is that not one word of the attribution came out of Sharpton's mouth. To the contrary, it came from News Groper [full disclosure: the associate editor was a fact-checker—can you feel the irony?—for Mother Jones], a website made up entirely of satirical celebrity blog entries. Sharpton can be pretty dramatic sometimes, but it's surprising that reporter Alex Johnson wasn't given any pause by the absurdity of the "quote":

"If the police caught Brett Favre (a white quarterback for the Green Bay Packers) running a dolphin-fighting ring out of his pool, where dolphins with spears attached to their foreheads fought each other, would they bust him? Of course not," Sharpton wrote Tuesday on his personal blog. "They would get his autograph, commend him on his tightly spiraled forward passes, then bet on one of his dolphins."

MSNBC got hip to the error and, rather than apologize to its readers for astoundingly sloppy reporting, posted in a correction that it "has determined that the blog is a hoax." The correction doesn't mention what tipped the news organization's meticulous fact-checkers off: News Groper's logo, which is a hand moving toward two globes that look like giant balls, or maybe breasts; Al Sharpton sharing a blog site with Lindsay Lohan, George Bush, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; or the words "fake parody blogs" in the title bar of every page.

Obasketball

If you want to be President, you've got to have a mean jump shot:

(H/T Marc Ambinder).

Of course, it's not beating the point guard of the Bobcats at HORSE, but it's something. Just one question: what would CNN be saying if he missed? I can almost see it now: "This is a HUGE gaffe by Obama, thinking that he can play, when he can't even make an open three. Very damaging... Why is he distracting voters from the issues?"

YouTube also has old school Obamastketball/Obamaball/Obasketball for your viewing pleasure.

Renzi Won't Seek Re-election

Three-term Arizona congressman Rick Renzi, who the watchdog group CREW ranks among the "20 most corrupt members of Congress," said yesterday that he won't seek reelection in '08, a decision that surely has something to do with the fact that he's under investigation by the FBI for a suspect land deal.

The Arizona Daily Star reports:

Renzi helped promote the land sale that netted $4.5 million for his former business partner and campaign donor James Sandlin, according to state records and officials.

Renzi also found himself caught up in the controversy over the firings of eight U.S. Attorneys after it was revealed that Arizona prosecutor Paul Charlton was targeted for dismissal by the Justice Department shortly after opening an investigation into Renzi.

Surge-tastic!

Kevin Drum over at the Washington Monthly has some data from the Brookings Institution (home of Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, surge defenders extraordinaire) and finds that, contrary to O'Hanlon and Pollack's recent upbeat assessment in the New York Times, "the news sure doesn't look very good." The numbers are from Brookings' own Iraq Index Project, so Matt Yglesias wonders "how it is that Brookings fellows like Peter Rodman, Michael O'Hanlon, and Kenneth Pollack seem so unaware of it."

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports the Joint Chiefs want significant troop cuts in Iraq, Yglesias notes Fred Kagan evaluating his own work on the surge in the Weekly Standard, and Iran invades Iraqi Kurdistan. Back in the White House, President Bush has "stepped up his high-pressure sales job... to stay the course in Iraq." But then again, as a Bush aide told Ron Suskind, people like Kevin Drum and McClatchy reporters and Peter Pace and the Los Angeles Times and Suskind himself — people who criticize the President — are "In what we call the reality-based community," and "that's not the way the world really works anymore.... We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

— Nick Baumann

Gen. Pace v. Gen. Petraeus

The Los Angeles Times reports that outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Major Gen. Peter Pace will call for cutting U.S. forces in half next year, putting him at odds with another general whose September report is much anticipated:

Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military. This assessment could collide with one being prepared by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, calling for the U.S. to maintain higher troop levels for 2008 and beyond.

Petraeus is expected to support a White House view that the absence of widespread political progress in Iraq requires several more months of the U.S. troop buildup before force levels are decreased to their pre-buildup numbers sometime next year. ....

Pace is expected to offer his advice privately instead of issuing a formal report. Still, the position of Pace and the Joint Chiefs could add weight to that of Bush administration critics, including Democratic presidential candidates, that the U.S. force should be reduced.

The newspaper further reports, "the Joint Chiefs in recent weeks have pressed concerns that the Iraq war has degraded the U.S. military's ability to respond, if needed, to other threats," including Iran.

Pace retires at the end of September.

August 23, 2007

Judges Nod Off as Fujimori's Hearing Continues

Today several of Chile's Supreme Court judges had trouble staying awake as the court continued to consider the human rights charges against former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori. Does their exhaustion stem from a night of agonizing over the ex-dictator's extradition proceedings? Highly unlikely. As much as I'd like to believe that the court appreciates the gravity of Fujimori's crimes, it just does not seem to be the case. In fact, earlier this week I wrote how odd it was that Chile fast tracked the case days after Peru's catastrophic earthquake, apparently hoping few people would notice.

It seemed likely that Chile's court would render a quick verdict in the favor of Fujimori when it was reported that the proceeding would be wrapped up in a day. But perhaps because members of the victims' families and human rights organizations have been present in court, and the judges realized they had to put on a bit of a show, a thorough reading of the corruption and human rights charges is being allowed.

— Rafael Valero

Bush Okays Blowing Up Mountains for Mining Companies

Bush is set to release a regulation tomorrow that will allow mining companies to blast the tops off mountains and dump the resulting waste in nearby streams and valleys.

To learn more about Bush's latest assault on the environment, continue reading this post on our science and health blog, The Blue Marble.

Who's Behind "Allawi-for-Iraq.com"?

IraqSlogger reports that on August 17, White House-connected lobby powerhouse, Barbour Griffith & Rogers (BGR), purchased a domain name, Allawi-for-Iraq.com.*

The timing was interesting. As Slogger's Christina Davidson reports, former Iraqi prime minister Ayad "Allawi argued in an August 18 Washington Post op-ed that Iraq will descend into chaos unless Maliki is replaced as prime minister."

Presumably, replaced by himself, he might have been hinting.

A couple months ago, I reported here on BGR's lobbying for another of Iraq's players, the Kurdistan Regional Government.

*Update: Whois registration for the Allawi domain below the fold:

Whois Record
Registrant:
Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Inc
1275 Pennsylvania Avenue, 10th Floor
Tenth Floor
Washington, DC 20004
US

Domain Name: ALLAWI-FOR-IRAQ.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Inc
1275 Pennsylvania Avenue, 10th Floor
Tenth Floor
Washington, DC 20004
US
202-333-4936 fax: 202-833-9392

Record expires on 17-Aug-2008.
Record created on 17-Aug-2007.
Database last updated on 23-Aug-2007 11:18:59 EDT.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS7.WORLDNIC.COM 205.178.190.4
NS8.WORLDNIC.COM 205.178.189.4

New White House Surge Surrogate, Freedom's Watch

Politico's Mike Allen reports that a new pro-war group, Freedom's Watch, fronted by former Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, has launched a $15 million advertising blitz to promote the surge:

A new group, Freedom’s Watch, is launching Wednesday with a $15 million, five-week campaign of TV, radio and Web ads featuring military veterans that is aimed at retaining support in Congress for President Bush’s “surge” policy on Iraq. ...

The board consists of Blakeman; Fleischer; Mel Sembler, a Florida Republican who was Bush’s ambassador to Italy; William P. Weidner, president and chief operating officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corp.; and Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. The donors include Sembler; Anthony Gioia, a Buffalo businessman who was Bush’s ambassador to Malta; Kevin Moley, who was Bush’s ambassador to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva; Howard Leach, a former Republican National Committee finance chairman who was Bush’s ambassador to France; Dr. John Templeton of Pennsylvania, chairman and president of the John Templeton Foundation; Ed Snider, chairman of Comcast Spectacor, the huge Philadelphia sports and entertainment firm; Sheldon Adelson, chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. and ranked by Forbes magazine as the third-wealthiest American; and Richard Fox, who is chairman of the Jewish Policy Center and was Pennsylvania State Chairman of the Reagan/Bush campaign in 1980.

The Washington Post and ThinkProgress have more. "Freedom's Watch will go head to head with Americans United for Change, a Democratic Party ally, backed by organized labor, that is pressuring the same wavering Republicans to break with the White House," the Post reports. "Although louder and more experienced, Americans United is not so moneyed, with a fundraising goal of $10 million for the year, and $1.75 million to $2 million already spent on ad campaigns."

Watch has money, organization and the White House on its side. But the recently released NIE on Iraq does not easily lend itself to the flag-backed ad blitz, which rallies "those who believe we must win the war on terror" to call and tell their congressperson "defeat is not an option."

Unclassified NIE on Iraq Key Judgments

An early copy of the unclassified key judgments from the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, "Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive," prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and available to the masses in a few hours.

Hot off the presses (.pdf) and below the fold. Analysis to come.

Key Judgments

There have been measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq’s security situation since our last National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in January 2007. The steep escalation of rates of violence has been checked for now, and overall attack levels across Iraq have fallen during seven of the last nine weeks. Coalition forces, working with Iraqi forces, tribal elements, and some Sunni insurgents, have reduced al-Qa’ida in Iraq’s (AQI) capabilities, restricted its freedom of movement, and denied it grassroots support in some areas. However, the level of overall violence, including attacks on and casualties among civilians, remains high; Iraq’s sectarian groups remain unreconciled; AQI retains the ability to conduct high-profile attacks; and to date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively. There have been modest improvements in economic output, budget execution, and government finances but fundamental structural problems continue to prevent sustained progress in economic growth and living conditions.

We assess, to the extent that Coalition forces continue to conduct robust counterinsurgency operations and mentor and support the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), that Iraq’s security will continue to improve modestly during the next six to 12 months but that levels of insurgent and sectarian violence will remain high and the Iraqi Government will continue to struggle to achieve national-level political reconciliation and improved governance. Broadly accepted political compromises required for sustained security, long-term political progress, and economic development are unlikely to emerge unless there is a fundamental shift in the factors driving Iraqi political and security developments.

Political and security trajectories in Iraq continue to be driven primarily by Shia insecurity about retaining political dominance, widespread Sunni unwillingness to accept a diminished political status, factional rivalries within the sectarian communities resulting in armed conflict, and the actions of extremists such as AQI and elements of the Sadrist Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM) militia that try to fuel sectarian violence. Two new drivers have emerged since the January Estimate: expanded Sunni opposition to AQI and Iraqi expectation of a Coalition drawdown. Perceptions that the Coalition is withdrawing probably will encourage factions anticipating a power vacuum to seek local security solutions that could intensify sectarian violence and intra-sectarian competition. At the same time, fearing a Coalition withdrawal, some tribal elements and Sunni groups probably will continue to seek accommodation with the Coalition to strengthen themselves for a post-Coalition security environment.

• Sunni Arab resistance to AQI has expanded in the last six to nine months but has not yet translated into broad Sunni Arab support for the Iraqi Government or widespread willingness to work with the Shia. The Iraqi Government’s Shia leaders fear these groups will ultimately side with armed opponents of the government, but the Iraqi Government has supported some initiatives to incorporate those rejecting AQI into Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry elements.

• Intra-Shia conflict involving factions competing for power and resources probably will intensify as Iraqis assume control of provincial security. In Basrah, violence has escalated with the drawdown of Coalition forces there. Local militias show few signs of reducing their competition for control of valuable oil resources and territory.

• The Sunni Arab community remains politically fragmented, and we see no prospective leaders that might engage in meaningful dialogue and deliver on national agreements.

• Kurdish leaders remain focused on protecting the autonomy of the Kurdish region and reluctant to compromise on key issues.

The IC assesses that the emergence of “bottom-up” security initiatives, principally among Sunni Arabs and focused on combating AQI, represent the best prospect for
improved security over the next six to 12 months, but we judge these initiatives will only translate into widespread political accommodation and enduring stability if the Iraqi Government accepts and supports them. A multi-stage process involving the Iraqi Government providing support and legitimacy for such initiatives could foster over the longer term political reconciliation between the participating Sunni Arabs and the national government. We also assess that under some conditions “bottom-up initiatives” could pose risks to the Iraqi Government.

• We judge such initiatives are most likely to succeed in predominantly Sunni Arab areas,
where the presence of AQI elements has been significant, tribal networks and identities
are strong, the local government is weak, sectarian conflict is low, and the ISF tolerate
Sunni initiatives, as illustrated by Al Anbar Province.

• Sunni Arab resistance to AQI has expanded, and neighborhood security groups,
occasionally consisting of mixed Shia-Sunni units, have proliferated in the past several
months. These trends, combined with increased Coalition operations, have eroded AQI’s
operational presence and capabilities in some areas.

• Such initiatives, if not fully exploited by the Iraqi Government, could over time also shift greater power to the regions, undermine efforts to impose central authority, and
reinvigorate armed opposition to the Baghdad government.

• Coalition military operations focused on improving population security, both in and
outside of Baghdad, will remain critical to the success of local and regional efforts until
sectarian fears are diminished enough to enable the Shia-led Iraqi Government to fully
support the efforts of local Sunni groups.

Iraqi Security Forces involved in combined operations with Coalition forces have
performed adequately, and some units have demonstrated increasing professional
competence. However, we judge that the ISF have not improved enough to conduct
major operations independent of the Coalition on a sustained basis in multiple locations and that the ISF remain reliant on the Coalition for important aspects of logistics and combat support.

• The deployment of ISF units from throughout Iraq to Baghdad in support of security
operations known as Operation Fardh al-Qanun marks significant progress since last
year when large groups of soldiers deserted rather than depart their home areas, but
Coalition and Iraqi Government support remains critical.

• Recently, the Iraqi military planned and conducted two joint Army and police large-scale security operations in Baghdad, demonstrating an improving capacity for operational command and control.

• Militia and insurgent influences continue to undermine the reliability of some ISF units, and political interference in security operations continues to undermine Coalition and ISF
efforts.

• The Maliki government is implementing plans to expand the Iraqi Army and to increase its overall personnel strength to address critical gaps, but we judge that significant security gains from those programs will take at least six to 12 months, and probably
longer, to materialize.

The IC assesses that the Iraqi Government will become more precarious over the next six to 12 months because of criticism by other members of the major Shia coalition (the Unified Iraqi Alliance, UIA), Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and other Sunni and Kurdish parties. Divisions between Maliki and the Sadrists have increased, and Shia factions have explored alternative coalitions aimed at constraining Maliki.

• The strains of the security situation and absence of key leaders have stalled internal
political debates, slowed national decisionmaking, and increased Maliki’s vulnerability to alternative coalitions.

• We judge that Maliki will continue to benefit from recognition among Shia leaders that
searching for a replacement could paralyze the government. Population displacement resulting from sectarian violence continues, imposing burdens on provincial governments and some neighboring states and increasing the danger of destabilizing influences spreading across Iraq’s borders over the next six to 12 months. The polarization of communities is most evident in Baghdad, where the Shia are a clear majority in more than half of all neighborhoods and Sunni areas have become surrounded by predominately Shia districts. Where population displacements have led to significant sectarian separation, conflict levels have diminished to some extent because warring communities find it more difficult to penetrate communal enclaves.

The IC assesses that Iraq’s neighbors will continue to focus on improving their leverage in Iraq in anticipation of a Coalition drawdown. Assistance to armed groups, especially from Iran, exacerbates the violence inside Iraq, and the reluctance of the Sunni states that are generally supportive of US regional goals to offer support to the Iraqi Government probably bolsters Iraqi Sunni Arabs’ rejection of the government’s legitimacy.

• Over the next year Tehran, concerned about a Sunni reemergence in Iraq and US efforts to limit Iranian influence, will continue to provide funding, weaponry, and training to Iraqi Shia militants. Iran has been intensifying aspects of its lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants, particularly the JAM, since at least the beginning of 2006. Explosively formed penetrator (EFP) attacks have risen dramatically.

• Syria has cracked down on some Sunni extremist groups attempting to infiltrate fighters into Iraq through Syria because of threats they pose to Syrian stability, but the IC now assesses that Damascus is providing support to non-AQI groups inside Iraq in a bid to increase Syrian influence.

• Turkey probably would use a range of measures to protect what it perceives as its interests in Iraq. The risk of cross-border operations against the People’s Congress of Kurdistan (KG) terrorist group based in northern Iraq remains. We assess that changing the mission of Coalition forces from a primarily counterinsurgency and stabilization role to a primary combat support role for Iraqi forces and counterterrorist operations to prevent AQI from establishing a safehaven would erode security gains achieved thus far. The impact of a change in mission on Iraq’s political and security environment and throughout the region probably would vary in intensity and suddenness of onset in relation to the rate and scale of a Coalition redeployment. Developments within the Iraqi communities themselves will be decisive in determining political and security trajectories.

• Recent security improvements in Iraq, including success against AQI, have depended significantly on the close synchronization of conventional counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations. A change of mission that interrupts that synchronization would place security improvements at risk.

The Drug War Continues Apace (Underwater)

Now the smugglers have subs:

A submarine-like vessel filled with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocaine was seized off the Guatemalan coast, U.S. officials said....Several drug-carrying submarines operated by Colombian drug cartels have been discovered in recent years. [emphasis mine]

There's nothing like basic economics to undermine the drug war. If you buy it, they will come. In subs, if necessary.

— Nick Baumann

GOP Senators Need Only Half Day in Iraq to Declare Significant Progress

Senator Jim Webb has called the military-organized trips American politicians take to Iraq "dog-and-pony shows." Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Bob Corker (R-TN) must have seen one hell of a show earlier this week, because they're declaring "clear success, province by province" after just a half day in country.

Yup. The Tennessee duo spent 10-14 hours of their four day trip actually in Iraq. Yet Alexander felt comfortable saying, "There are probably seven provinces where enough progress has been made to involve Iraqis in their own security."

The good news, amidst all this disingenuousness, is that both Senators seemed to think things were going so well in Iraq that we could start reducing the number of soldiers there. I'm smelling a positive September report, followed by Republicans claiming it's time to start shuffling troops home. Bush will claim we have grand obligations to Iraq, but will reduce troops in time to kill the Democrats' biggest 2008 advantage.

The Atmosphere Ate My Laptop

The Government Accountability Office, source of so much amusement to the denizens of DC, has released a report (PDF) that says NASA employees stole almost $100 million in supplies from the agency in the past decade. From the New York Times:

One thief appropriated an office laptop as his own by declaring the machine lost. It had been thrown from the International Space Station, he explained, apparently with a straight face, and burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The GAO report uses very strong language to condemn NASA's management, noting a "lack of accountability" and "weak internal controls." Let's not forget that this is at the organization responsible for sending people into space. Maybe a little accountability is in order? Just a thought.

— Nick Baumann

If the Election's Tomorrow and Clinton's the Nominee...

...Then she wins big, says Chris Bowers, who compiled the state-by-state head-to-head polls to put together two electoral maps. Clinton wins the electoral vote 335-203 over Giuliani and 430-108 over Romney. And Bowers thinks this is the Democrats' "worst case scenario":

It is important to keep in mind that Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani are the two frontrunners for the Republican nomination right now, and that Hillary Clinton is supposedly the least electable Democrat of the four early state candidates in double digits. To put it another way, this is supposedly the worst-case scenario for Democrats right now. On top of this, what do you think will happen to either Giuliani or Romney's numbers when, for nine consecutive months next year (February 6th through Election Day), they are on every media possible, every day, arguing that we don't need to withdraw any troops from Iraq?

Good news for the Dems, if it's true. Part of it, at least, may not be: according to some polls, Clinton is not the "least electable Democrat." Of the top three Democratic candidates, only Clinton won all three head-to-head contests with Giuliani, McCain, and Thompson. But seriously: 430-108? If you're a Republican, that has to make the prospect of a Romney nomination look pretty bleak.

— Nick Baumann

"Private Eyes, They're Watching You..."

Last week, while addressing a border security conference in El Paso, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell confirmed that about 100 people in the United States are currently subject to court-approved wiretaps. "On the U.S. persons side, it's 100 or less," McConnell said. "And then, the foreign side—it's in the thousands." The eavesdropping is part of ongoing counter-terrorism investigations. McConnell's comments were reported in a piece by Joby Warrick in this morning's Washington Post.

In related news, starting next Monday, U.S. intelligence agencies will begin screening thousands of people who work for charitable organizations that receive funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The move apparently comes in response to a GAO report from 2005, which revealed that six organizations receiving U.S. funding were later determined to have ties to terrorist organizations. From the Post:

The program is described in the notice as the Partner Vetting System. It demands for the first time that nongovernmental organizations file information with the government on each officer, board member and key employee and those associated with an application for AID funds or managing a project when funded.

The information is to include name, address, date and place of birth, citizenship, Social Security and passport numbers, sex, and profession or other employment data. The data collected "will be used to conduct national security screening" to ensure these persons have no connection to entities or individuals "associated with terrorism" or "deemed to be a risk to national security," according to the notice.

Such screening normally involves sending the data to the FBI and other police and intelligence agencies to see if negative information surfaces.

The new system would also require that the groups turn over the individuals' telephone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses, another indication that those numbers would be checked against data collected as part of a terrorist screening program run by the U.S. intelligence community.

Until now, under an earlier Bush administration initiative, nongovernmental organizations had been required to check their own employees and then certify to AID that they were certain no one was associated with individuals or groups that appeared on applicable governmental terrorist listings.

Obama on Cuba: Another Heterodoxy?

Barack Obama is back with another challenge to the foreign policy orthodoxy. (His willingness to attack Pakistan and his ruling out of a nuclear attack to eliminate terrorists are two others.)

This time, it's about Cuba. Obama stated a position in a Miami Herald op-ed that makes sense but doesn't take into account the political world's customary set of panderings. Members of the Cuban exile community that has huge sway in Florida politics take a hard line against the island nation, and any politician who hopes to win the Sunshine State usually follows their lead. They want to cut off or heavily restrict remittances and travel to Cuba, so as to kill Castro's regime by a slow strangulation. Obama said that he wants to ease restrictions, so Cubans in the U.S. can visit their relatives on the island, and send money home if desired.

Hillary Clinton and the Republicans, who all support the status quo, attacked Obama for his position, arguing that it is borne out of naiveté and that it illustrates the lack of strength and seriousness that makes the Illinois senator unfit for the role of Commander-in-Chief. Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, and Dennis Kucinich, however, all said they agree with Obama in the wake of his Herald op-ed.

Stuff like this is getting Obama called gaffe-prone (see Hannity and Mitt Romney in this video), but in reality these aren't traditional faux pas; he's just refusing to accept conventional wisdom. Can you win a presidential election when you are frequently at odds with the think tanks, most of Congress, the powerful interests, and the status quo? Well, he was right on the Iraq War, and all those folks were wrong... What do you think?

Bush Administration's Own Report Doubts Maliki Gov't

In Bush's Iraq-as-Vietnam speech that Monika blogged about early this morning (lots of interesting stuff in the comments section, btw), he said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is a "good man with a difficult job." He's half right, I suppose.

But why come out in favor of Maliki when you are about to undercut him? From the Times:

The administration is planning to make public today parts of a sober new report by American intelligence agencies expressing deep doubts that the government of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, can overcome sectarian differences. Government officials who have seen the report say it gives a bleak outlook on the chances Mr. Maliki can meet milestones intended to promote unity in Iraq.

You can read all about the miserable Maliki government here. To date, Democratic Sens. Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton have called for Maliki to get the boot — it appears the intelligence community isn't far behind.

Update: For a rundown of Maliki's possible replacements, see this Time article. Looks like the U.S.'s hopes lie with a guy named Mithal Alussi. The real question is, who on earth would want this job?

Bush Vietnam Speech: We Have Met the Enemy, and It Is You

Everyone has a take on the president’s stunning Iraq-Vietnam analogy (message: things get better the longer we stay), but the VFW speech is a fascinating list of every other war rationale the Bush administration has tried and failed to make stick. There is the "the war in Iraq is all about fighting al Qaeda" line, with its easy conflation of insurgents and jihadists:

Like our enemies in the past, the terrorists who wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places seek to spread a political vision of their own -- a harsh plan for life that crushes freedom, tolerance, and dissent.

Like our enemies in the past, they kill Americans because we stand in their way of imposing this ideology across a vital region of the world.

And the "if you're not with us, you're with them" smear, reincarnated as "peaceniks lost Vietnam, and that's why the terrorists are winning" (at least when John McCain goes down this road, he has a shred of integrity):

There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle -- those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that "the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today."

His number two man, Zawahiri, has also invoked Vietnam. In a letter to al Qaeda's chief of operations in Iraq, Zawahiri pointed to "the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents."

…Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility -- but the terrorists see it differently.

Read the whole thing for yourself, and let us know what else jumps out at you in the comments.

August 22, 2007

State Officials Respond to Mother Jones' "School of Shock" Story, Call the Judge Rotenberg Center "Inhumane"

Jennifer Gonnerman's yearlong investigation for Mother Jones into the Judge Rotenberg Center—a taxpayer-funded "school" that takes autistic, mentally retarded, and emotionally disturbed kids from eight states and Washington D.C. and punishes them with electric shocks—is eliciting strong statements from state officials.

The first is from Massachusetts state Senator Brian A. Joyce and Representative John W. Scibak; Joyce has been trying for years to shut the Rotenberg Center down:

Senator Brian A. Joyce and Representative John W. Scibak are calling for the immediate passage of legislation that would strongly regulate the use of “aversive” therapy on children in light of a new report highlighting the practices of a Massachusetts-based school now infamously known as the “school of shock.”

In the September edition of the national magazine Mother Jones, the reporter, who spent a year researching the article and interviewing Judge Rotenberg Center founder and director Matt Israel, refers to the schools as a high school version of Abu Ghraib and describes heartbreaking stories of children (some as young as 9-years-old) being painfully shocked by accident, shocked for swearing or being shocked over decades for the same behavior.

Eight states (including Massachusetts) send children with autism, mental retardation, ADD, ADHD and emotional problems to the Canton-based school that punishes them with food deprivation and powerful electric shocks. JRC currently treats about 230 children and brings in annual revenues exceeding $56 million.

Massachusetts legislators have been working with disability advocates for over twenty years to ban the use of shock (aversive) therapy with little results.

Senator Joyce and Representative Scibak recently filed two bills to safeguard and delineate a narrow range of behavior problems where aversive therapy may be appropriate and would address many of the egregious scenarios described in the article such as children being painfully shocked for swearing.

The bills are the culmination of hundreds of hours of work and discussions between behavior analysts and the psychological community, legislators, and disability and civil rights advocates.

"We believe that it is government’s fundamental duty to protect our most innocent and vulnerable populations,” said Senator Joyce noting that prominent behavior-modification experts, including some cited by Matt Israel, call the JRC ineffective and outmoded. The Canton-based school is in Senator Joyce’s district.

And this is from New York State Assemblywoman Joan L. Millman who represents Brooklyn (52nd District), home to several of the kids sent to the Rotenberg Center:

As the author of New York State's Billy's Law, which led to on-site visits and inspections of a score of out-of-state residential treatment facilities, I was encouraged by your recent article describing the non-professional practices at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, located in Massachusetts. The so-called treatment of mentally retarded, autistic and bipolar youngsters, which consists of electric shock treatment, specialized food programs (i.e. the withholding of food), the lack of sufficient academic and special education instructions, and the limited provision of related services, all contribute to the inhumane conditions that exist at the center. To subject our most vulnerable children to months and even years of such treatments, is an extreme and inhumane form of intervention, not based on current research. Thank you for shedding light on this controversial institution.

We'll keep you posted about what other elected officials are saying and doing (the story has been sent to all pertinent Congressional delegations and state representatives, so you can follow up too) about the Rotenberg Center. Meanwhile, you can read all about it here.

Nina Berman's Photos on Wounded Soldiers: Mother Jones First Ran Them Back in 2004

Today the New York Times has a nice piece heralding the work of photographer Nina Berman, who for years has been documenting the plight of soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Times made mention of the fact that "20 of her portraits were published as a book, 'Purple Hearts: Back From Iraq' (Trolley Books, 2004), with an introduction by Verlyn Klinkenborg, a member of the editorial board of The New York Times." What the Times failed to mention, however, is that that book came out of a Mother Jones photo essay that appeared in 2004.

Interesting, because back then, neither the Times nor most other major papers were doing much to chronicle the fate of the wounded. Or the dead. Mother Jones, on the other hand, made a concerted effort to get photo essays that nobody else would publish into our pages. You can see these photo essays and other topics that will eventually be covered elsewhere (like what's happened to women in Afghanistan post-invasion) on our photo essay archive page. Where an interview with Nina also lives.

That, too, ran four years ago. But good to see the Times catching up.

Half of America's Gain in Income Goes to Richest 0.25 Percent

New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston is kind of an awesome dude. Yesterday, he dropped one of his customary bombshell reports:

[Earners of over $1 million/year,] who constitute less than a quarter of 1 percent of all taxpayers, reaped almost 47 percent of the total income gains in 2005, compared with 2000.

People with incomes of more than a million dollars also received 62 percent of the savings from the reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividends that President Bush signed into law in 2003...

So less than one-quarter of one percent of all taxpayers took in almost 50 percent of the nation's ~~revenues~~ revenue gain. And what about the little guy? Screwed, as you would suspect.

Americans earned a smaller average income in 2005 than in 2000, the fifth consecutive year that they had to make ends meet with less money...

Total income listed on tax returns grew every year after World War II, with a single one-year exception, until 2001, making the five-year period of lower average incomes and four years of lower total incomes a new experience for the majority of Americans born since 1945.

Mother Jones has written in the past about how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We've also interviewed David Cay Johnston.

Bush Draws Parallel Between Iraq, Vietnam

Finally, something war champions and war critics can agree upon.

Kucinich Wins Debate Poll, ABC Covers Up Results

Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich's supporters (and, according to his website, even some non-supporters) are demanding that ABC explain its actions of the last few days.

On Monday afternoon, Congressman Kucinich took a significant lead in the ABC online poll: Who won the Democratic debate? About the time that he took that lead, ABC removed the poll from its prominent position on the ABC website. Then a new poll suddenly went up, "Who is winning the Democratic debate?"

Those events could be seen as technical glitches, but there was more to come. Kucinich took the lead in the second poll, also, and that poll, too, was dropped. ABC also "forgot" to announce the results (Kucinich tied with Sen. Hillary Clinton as the winner), and news about the poll is nowhere to be seen on the ABC website. Kucinich was also cut out of a group photo of all the candidates in the debate.

It's a wonder viewers were even able to vote for Kucinich in the poll. He was not permitted to answer a question from debate moderator George Stephanopoulos until the debate had been under way for half an hour.

So far, the network has failed to respond to questions about these events.

Michael O'Hanlon Versus the Troops: Battle of the Op-Eds

Two days ago, I pointed our readers to a New York Times op-ed written by seven active duty American soldiers in Iraq. The soldiers argued the surge isn't working and that "four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise." Their call for withdrawal was a direct rebuke of Michael O'Hanlon and his recently-stated pro-surge views. Witness the opening line of O'Hanlon's pro-war op-ed ("A War We Just Might Win"):

Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel... the political debate in Washington is surreal.

And the opening line from the soldiers ("The War as We Saw It"):

Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal.

Now, O'Hanlon is acknowledging the smackdown. But he won't back down, insisting that the American military is partnering better with the Iraqis, is getting better intelligence, and is on the offensive against the insurgents. Civilian casualties are down in Iraq, he argues, though that's been contested.

What O'Hanlon refuses to recognize is that the surge was designed to slow violence in Iraq only in service of political ends. Going on the offensive against the insurgents is fine, but it's only an important development if Iraqi politicians seize the opening and make progress towards a reconciled nation and a functioning government. They haven't done that. They haven't even come close.

Without political progress, the surge (and the military success O'Hanlon believes it is having) is just another swing in the cycle of war. We're doing better now, but the insurgents will return with new and different tactics in a few months. Military officials agree. Check out this sentence from a recent McClatchy article: "Without reconciliation, the military officers say, any decline in violence will be temporary and bloodshed could return to previous levels as soon as the U.S. military cuts back its campaign against insurgent attacks."

Oh, and as to why the troops writing in the Times might not be impressed with the surge's so-called "success," maybe it has something to do with the fact that this summer has been the deadliest summer of the war for American troops.

June-July-August 2003: 113 Americans killed
June-July-August 2004: 162 Americans killed
June-July-August 2005: 217 Americans killed
June-July-August 2006: 169 Americans killed
June-July-August 2007: 229 Americans killed so far

Breach of Contract

A front-page story in this morning's Washington Post reveals that federal no-bid contracts are not the exception to the rule: to a growing extent, they are the rule. Such contracts are awarded without "full and open" competition and often go to a small group of well-connected companies. Those companies appear to be cleaning up: a recent congressional report found that spending on no-bid contracts has tripled to $207 billion since 2000. Proponents say that foregoing competition by-passes delays, permitting important work to be completed more quickly. Now, one could argue there are situations in which no-bid contracts are appropriate. Say, in New Orleans after Katrina, where there was a desperate need for immediate action.... or in the reconstruction of Iraq. But the potential for (and, sadly, the reality of) abuse is ever present.

For that, reference the Post's Business section. In what is said to be the largest bribery case to come out of the Iraq reconstruction, investigators say that Army Major John L. Cockerham, his wife Melissa, and his sister Carolyn Blake took $9.6 million in bribes from contractors and expected to receive another $5.4 million before they were arrested. Cockerham was a contracting officer deployed to Camp Arifjan near Kuwait City. His position allowed him to approve contracts for up to $10 million. He quickly leveraged his authority to suit his own needs. From the Post:

The Cockerhams and Blake were arrested in late July after investigators searched the Cockerhams' house at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio and allegedly found evidence linking them to the bribery scheme. Aspects of the case read like a spy novel: a briefcase with $300,000 in cash in a Kuwaiti parking lot; handwritten ledgers that identify money sources with code names like Destiny Carter; and instructions telling co-conspirators to, in a pinch, toss safe-deposit keys out a window, stash key documents in the bosom and, lastly, destroy the instructions.

But, if you believe Cockerham's lawyers, the Major and his co-conspirators were motivated by a desire to please God.

Defense attorneys, however, say the Cockerhams and Blake are hardworking, church-going people. The Cockerhams have confessed to taking money in exchange for the awarding of contracts, according to an affidavit from an Army criminal investigator, but put the amount at a little more than $1 million. Blake told investigators the money was to be used to set up a church, according to the affidavit...

By all accounts, the Cockerhams had not recently gone on any visible spending sprees. As of July 31, the most recent hearing in the case, the couple owed $13,000 in car payments and were driving a 2004 Toyota minivan and 1993 Isuzu pickup. John Cockerham reported an additional $54,000 in debt, in part from credit cards and student loans...

According to the investigator's affidavit, Blake acknowledged that she kept a ledger [of bribes she accepted], but she says it was for a different purpose. She said she wanted to start a church in Africa. On a trip to South Africa, she visited a school for poor girls funded by television star Oprah Winfrey. Blake says she was inspired to do something similar, according to Wilson, her attorney. "She thought this was a calling from God," Wilson said.

Remember Freedom Fries?

It was only four years ago that Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and Walter Jones (R-NC) announced the official name change in Congressional cafeterias from French fries and French toast to Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast. "This action today is a small, but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France," said Ney at the time.

My, how les temps have changed!

Now ex-Rep Ney is serving 30 months jail time, Jones has become a fierce war critic, and lo and behold, the French may be coming to the rescue in Iraq. From the Washington Post:

Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner used a surprise trip to Baghdad to call on European countries to help the United States repair Iraq. Kouchner's comments represent a major departure from former French president Jacques Chirac's stance on Iraq. Relations between France and the United States were severely damaged after Chirac led global opposition to the 2003 invasion.

Since his election in May, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has sought to strengthen ties with the United States. Kouchner told a French radio station that Iraq's leaders are "expecting something" from the French government and that he planned to assist U.S. efforts.

"The Americans can't get this country out of difficulty all alone," Kouchner said.

Kouchner's humanitarian background as co-founder of the medical relief group Medecins Sans Frontieres may begin to explain the willingness to overlook the anti-French GOP posturing of the not-so-distant past and to let bygones be bygones. Pass the pâté.

August 21, 2007

Amidst Devastation, Ex-Peruvian Dictator Might Walk

So when is the best time for an ex-Peruvian dictator to have an extradition hearing in front of Chile's full Supreme Court? While Peru is recovering from a devastating 8.0 earthquake that has killed more than 500 civilians.

Today, Chile's Supreme Court is convening to decide the fate of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori. He is wanted in Peru for human rights violations he committed while leading a so-called "war on terror" against two insurgencies in Peru between 1990 and 2000. Fujimori's capture and extradition process has been long and twisted. Many Peruvian officials and human rights organizations want his head for the atrocities he oversaw, but many suspect that Peru's current President, Alan Garcia—although you wouldn't know from all his government's posturing over the extradition—would rather Fujimori escape justice and return to Japan, where he lived in exile for nearly five years. To pass his conservative economic legislation, Garcia's dealings with the Fujimoristas in Peru's congress came with an implicit quid pro quo—the Fujimoristas want Fujimori to escape trial.

So while Peruvians are distracted by a natural disaster, Fujimori's final extradition hearing is conveniently taking place months before anyone predicted it would. The Chilean Supreme Court has been dragging its feet for the last year, ratcheting up tensions inside Peru.

Earlier this month, I bet Fujimori would be home for Christmas, but it looks like he could be home well before Thanksgiving.

—Rafael Valero

Breaking: Report Reveals CIA Failures Before 9/11

From the Los Angeles Times:

The CIA never developed an overall strategy for confronting Al Qaeda and let precious expertise and resources go unused in the years leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, according to an internal investigation...

Some key findings:

The CIA failed to spend all its funding for counter-terrorism, even while agency officials expressed concern about the growing threat of terrorism and asked for increased funding.

The CIA let its battles with other agencies get in the way of its efforts.

The report points to overall incompetence rather than any smoking gun.

The CIA has tried to suppress its own report for more than two years.

Read more on the CIA's role in 9/11 here.

RudyCare! Is Useless!

I overreached in my blog post earlier today when I said that the Republican presidential candidates don't have plans on any of the issues. Rudy Giuliani has a health care plan, it's just counterproductive and dumb.

A Big Thank You

My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has supported the campaign to open Mother Jones’ new Washington, D.C., news bureau and expand our Investigative Team. The campaign is still rolling, and we'll keep you posted as we close in on our goal of raising $60,000.

For those who contributed at a level that qualifies you for our prize drawing, the drawing will be held within the next several days, and we’ll notify the winners by email. To everyone who has made a donation, regardless of the dollar amount, we are grateful for your generosity and inspired by your confidence that there's an important place inside the Beltway for this brand of independent, investigative journalism.

I hope you’ll check back regularly with motherjones.com and Mother Jones magazine—you’ll be able to see your investment at work.

While the deadline for our prize drawing has passed, you can still help our D.C. campaign with a tax-deductible gift to the Mother Jones Investigative Fund. For any gift of $45 or more, you'll receive a one-year subscription to Mother Jones magazine (new or renewal).

Again, thanks for your generous support. We’ll make every dollar count.

Sincerely,

Jay Harris
President & Publisher

Fred Thompson in Hot FEC Water

There are rules that govern how presidential candidates and their campaigns can act. And it turns out, if you try to circumvent those rules by refusing to officially declare your candidacy, but you travel the country campaigning anyway, you are in violation of the law.

That's the hard lesson currently being learned by Fred Thompson, or as you know him, the big, bald guy that is supposedly the next Reagan but is actually just really, really lazy. A liberal blogger has filed a complaint against Thompson with the Federal Elections Commission.

The complaint appears to have real legitimacy, and may result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for Big T. We'll keep you posted.

What's Needed in Coverage of GOP Candidates

Unlike a lot of people, I don't have a problem with certain kinds of superficial campaign coverage. Take, for example this recent Boston Globe story that analyzed the "Leave it to Beaver" language used by Mitt Romney on the campaign trail.

"Whoop-de-do!" he says of John Edwards's proposal to let Americans save $250 tax-free. "Gosh, I love America," Romney said during one GOP debate. After hitting a long golf drive in one of his campaign videos, he shouts, "Holy moly!"

Romney often sounds as if he has stepped out of a time machine from 1950s suburban America...

Okay, fine. That's not really interesting, but whatever. If a reporter and an editor want to put in the time to dissect this sort of stuff, that's their choice. If you or I, as serious consumers of news, want something more substantive, we can just find it somewhere else. Right?

Wrong! This campaign season, we have not seen the Globe or anyone else publish a dissection of Romney's language one day and a dissection of his Iraq policy the next. No one is paying attention to the complete and utter lack of substantive issue positions from the Republicans. They have no serious ideas on Iraq, on health care, or on climate change — they're running on rhetoric, personality, and resume. The Democrats have all of that, plus incredibly detailed plans for America's most pressing priorities. Until that truth appears in the mainstream media regularly, superficial coverage like the Globe's remains troubling.

One possible exception here, by the way, is the American Prospect, which has written about this once and blogged about it as well. (We've noted it too.)

August 20, 2007

Mother Jones Contributing Writer Julia Whitty Speaks in SF Tomorrow

Bay Area residents: don't miss author, filmmaker, and Mother Jones contributing writer and blogger Julia Whitty ("Gone," May/June 2007). She'll be speaking tomorrow at the California Academy of Sciences about "wonders and warnings from the oceans." Time: 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Location: 875 Howard Street, between 4th and 5th Streets. Admission price: $8 for non-members.

Add 'Probable Flooding' to the List of Dangers in Iraq

Scariest headline of the day comes from Army Times: "Iraqi Dam Expected To Burst, Engulf City, Air Base Any Day."

And they're completely serious. You can read the entire article at the link (it's about Mosul), but here's just one of the many quotes.

Almost every conversation in Mosul — over card games, coffee or even out on patrol — leads to speculation about when the dam will finally go.

Jeepers.

Chamillionaire, Cultural Pundit

If you're interested in a hip-hop take on faux news, global warming, and America's culture wars, check out Chamillionaire's "Evening News." It's pretty excellent. Chamillionaire, who's always had a lot to say about swearing in rap music (see below), announced earlier this month that he's going cuss-free.

Chamillionaire is most famous for "Ridin'," if that rings a bell. (He's also, according to Status Ain't Hood, "one of the five or six greatest rappers on planet Earth.") Another new video from him worth checking out is "Hip-Hop Police," which, awesomely, features a cameo from Slick Rick.

FOX News Fundraises for Giuliani

Here's your fair and balanced news story of the day. According to the Daily News, Sean Hannity recently introduced Rudy Giuliani at a closed-door, $250-per-head fundraiser in New York City, committing what many at real journalism outfits would call an unpardonable ethical sin. Even for FOX, this blurs the lines between its standard journalism-cum-advocacy and outright advocacy. The defense from FOX's senior vice-president of programming? "Sean is not a journalist — Sean is a conservative commentator." That's true, he's not a journalist. In fact, FOX News talking heads are proudly anti-journalist.

The Hannity-Giuliani nexis should surprise no one. Hannity's crush on Rudy is well-documented.

The Hotline, a political journal, has noted that through July 15, Giuliani had enjoyed 115 minutes of free face time on Fox - more than half of that on "Hannity & Colmes." His airtime on Fox was 25% higher than any other Republican candidate, data show.

Fair. And. Balanced. No doubt about it. If I was Mitt Romney, I'd be pissed.

Seven Active Duty Soldiers in Iraq Take to the Pages of the NY Times

I would consider this a direct rebuke of Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack.

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal... The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework...

Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Read the full thing here.

Update: There is a really good reported piece on life in Baghdad in Newsweek today. Here's the passage with the most direct summary, but the rest is filled with captivating details and personal stories:

While security is returning to some areas of Baghdad, modern conveniences aren't necessarily following. The Iraqi capital is no longer the place described in the old guidebooks, a metropolis of casinos, culture and Western-run hotel chains, although vestiges of that city can still be found. Instead, unceasing violence has thrust Baghdad back to a more primitive era, forcing its people to take up pre-industrial occupations and rediscover almost forgotten technologies. The collapse of municipal water services has revived the profession of well-digging... Donkey and horse carts are increasingly common on the capital's streets...

"Tepid" Interest for a Rummy Iraq Book

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been fishing for a deal for a book that would justify the Iraq war. There's just one problem, the New York Post reports. Publishers aren't very interested.

IN the latest development in the quest by Donald Rumsfeld to snag a book deal, a well-placed industry source said the former Secretary of Defense has received only tepid interest from a handful of publishers.

As a result, he now plans to make it a full-blown autobiography rather than simply a treatment of his six years in the cabinet. ...

Rumsfeld has retained Washington, D.C., attorney Robert Barnett, who snared big book deals for Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Alan Greenspan.

Barnett declined to comment on a Rumsfeld book other than to say, "It's all very preliminary. Nothing has gone out yet."

Last week, Reuters reported that Rumsfeld had in fact submitted his resignation to Bush the day before the November 2006 elections that turned both houses of Congress over to the Democrats. One word his resignation letter did not mention? Iraq.

August 19, 2007

Weird Weather Watch: Headlines in the Era of Climate Change

Three of CNN.com's 13 headlines today:

August 25, 2007

August 24, 2007

August 23, 2007

August 22, 2007

August 21, 2007

August 20, 2007

August 19, 2007

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